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Should I use React Native?

This article is my curated list of articles about this subject. Plus a few rapid-fire thoughts from my experience with this framework (15 months and counting).

Why I’m writing it? Because I end up saving this kind of articles all over my internet (GKeep, Medium, Pocket, etc) and when I get asked “Should I use it?” I always end up sending him/her just a portion of the full list. And I alwaysforget that other one which was so good oh uhm where did I save it.

Let’s start easy: here’s the list of articles I found around the internet that have some actually interesting information about React Native, why it should be used or which drawbacks it has:

And here’s the harsh part, where I tell some quick things. They will be rapid because I don’t want to explain them. It’d probably take me 20 mins to dive-deep into each one of them, and when I get asked about React Native usually I have less than 30 seconds. So you’ll have to trust me. Or not.

Here we go:

Yes, I think that for 90% of the apps React Native is more than enough. Saves you money while reaching broader market.

There is no other viable alternative for truly native apps, aside from native itself. Probably in the future Flutter will be good, but yeah React Native doesn’t have any “true” rival at the moment. (flame wars in 3..2..1..)

It’s HARD. You’ll probably spend 10/20% of the developing time keeping up with new versions, reading source code or going through issues in repos.

I hope that reading all of this helped figure out if you, your company or your flatmate should use React Native for a new mobile app.

I hope it provided enough of a wide range of feedbacks that you can take my opinion, mix it with the articles above, drop it on your particular situation and formulate your own answer.

Aaaaaaaaand then throw it away and try for yourself, if you are a developer. Snack Expo is awesome to get a first taste of what is it like; then you can head to my other article about what to do to learn it properly.